Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Among the colorful plants and foliage of Maui, bougainvillea is probably my favorite. I used to grow it on my back porch when I lived in San Mateo in order to be able to open my door for fresh air and have shade when it was opened. It comes in extraordinary colors, and the variety in Maui seems to have less obvious menacing thorns (which are more like something on a medieval weapon) waiting to scratch your hand.

It's my intent to completley fill this Moleskine (and this will be a continuing topic here on this blog). And since I am just starting out drawing again after so many years of not drawing (which is yet AGAIN another topic), I thought I would start easily with pointillism. Pointillism is nice because you can "dot out" the skeleton of what you want to draw and even "dot in" the shadows. If you make a hideous mistake, you can "dot over" the other dots. It's a good way to slowly see how things will look before really committing with further detail or even color. Since I struggle with perfectionism, it will be a good exercise for me to fill a Moleskine knowing full well that later drawings will not be as good as this one and some will be better. In short, this sketch book will be inconsistent and that will bother me, I am sure.

But I will press on through the discomfort of it and see where it leads me.